


Red Shoes & Tin Houses III

by Heiots



Series: Red Shoes & Tin Houses [3]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Clint Barton & Tony Stark Friendship, F/M, Gen, Hurt Tony Stark, Natasha Romanov Feels, Natasha Romanov Has Issues, Natasha Romanov Is Not A Robot, Natasha Romanov Needs a Hug, Natasha-centric, POV Natasha Romanov, Protective Tony Stark, Steve Rogers & Natasha Romanov Friendship, Steve Rogers & Tony Stark Friendship, Tony Stark Feels, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Has Issues, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Tony-centric
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-01
Updated: 2016-06-04
Packaged: 2018-05-28 08:48:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 11,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6322810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Heiots/pseuds/Heiots
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Natasha Romanov went missing at fifteen. Tony Stark meets her again at twenty-seven. She's not the Natasha he grew up with.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Highly recommend Part 1 & 2 be read before you embark on this journey.

 

When Natalie Rushman takes her first step onto what they call the “tiny red dot” in Asia, the island greets her with a typical tropical downpour. She gazes behind glass panes from the bustling terminal at the dark clouds and sheets of rain – not quite the warm welcome she would’ve liked, but at least she’s packed for the humid weather.

A blue cab with the word “Comfort” emblazoned on the doors takes her through jammed expressways, passing high-rise buildings and lush greenery. The fare in red numbers read eighteen-twenty when it stops at the three-star hotel she’ll be staying at. She hands the driver two unfamiliar orange ten-dollar notes. He returns her a handful of coins in exchange, and in accented English, tells her to enjoy her stay.

She checks in and lets herself into Room 714, down the corridor on the right and three doors from the lift lobby. Maneuvering red hair into a messy bun, she strips off the clothes she’s been wearing for the past twenty-four hours and steps into the bathroom for a quick shower, letting the warm blast of water take the edge off the exhaustion. It’s past three in the morning back in the States; she caught no sleep at all on the plane, and jet lag tells her she might not be able to stay conscious for another seven hours till bed.

At least she's got nowhere to rush off to. She’s a jobless American now – by choice, having tendered her resignation at the school she'd taught at. After a long four years, it became clear that the initial excitement of the job had whittled to discontentment with the mundane mediocrity of life. Quitting meant no more irate overprotective parents and stuffy board members to report to. It also meant she would have to find another source of income and a new direction to focus in, which led to the decision to fly half the world in hopes that she would stumble across some form of inspiration.

Her circle of colleagues and even smaller circle of friends had been surprised, which surprised _her_. They either don’t communicate often enough, or maybe she’s just adept at hiding dissatisfaction.

They celebrated the beginning of a new chapter of her life with a night of drinking – a request she normally wouldn't have agreed to due to the influence of her past strict ballet regime, but she conceded after some persuasion and left them all in the dust. She credits her exceptionally high alcohol tolerance to genes. Or something. She wouldn't know. She's never seen her parents drinking when they were alive.

She steps out of the shower, wrapped in a fluffy, white towel. Standing before the mirror, she wipes a portion clear of steam with a hand, scrutinizing her reflection with a critical eye.

Maybe a haircut would do the trick – something short, trendy, and yells independent twenty-seven-year-old.

The thought makes her scoff. Abandoning her bathroom musings, she dresses quickly, and with the rain still pouring out, heads down to the second floor where the dining area is. No one is around except for the staff and an unusually buff blond guy who’d either forgot to towel after his bath, or else he’d just finished an exceptionally vigorous workout. 

She picks through the buffet and sits by the window, trying not to pay too obvious attention to the increasing number of plates stacked on the other occupied table. Halfway through her meal, a shadow falls over her seat; it’s the blond dude with a twinkle in blue eyes.

“High metabolism,” he says in an amused voice.

Her face warms as he tilts his chin in goodbye and strides off, haversack over his shoulder.

Guess her staring hadn't been as inconspicuous as she thought.

Back in her room, weariness returns with full force. With one last look at the rainy landscape, she pulls the steel-grey curtains together, drowning the room in darkness.

Adventures in a new country can wait till the next day.

* * *

Tony Stark lounges under the shade of a tent-covered area just outside a Starbucks café. It's better than languishing under the heat of the midday sun in his jeans, shirt, and the striped hoodie that is now tied around his waist. Unlike the patrons out queuing for rides, he isn’t here for enjoyment; he’s here to watch people. 

He takes a sip of his White Mocha, eyeing a group of particularly rumbustious teens when his cell phone rings.

It’s Barton.

He swipes the green button across the screen and is rewarded with Paul Young crooning into his ear with the oldie _Every Time You Go Away_.

“Enough with the sappy 80s soundtrack, Barton," he says in irritation. "The last thing I need is for you to influence Jarvis with your crappy taste in music.”

“You know you miss our karaoke sessions.”

“You using karaoke sessions to convince me to come back?” He slaps at the sweat trickling down his neck. Blasted heat. “Fail.”

“They’re looking for you.” The archer's voice takes on a more serious tone.

“Who?”

“Not funny, Stark. They don’t know where you are, and it’s making them nervous. It’s making _us_ nervous.”  Barton pauses. “It’s been over ten years, Tony. She could be anywhere.”

“Hm, so who’s the master – or mistress – at hide-and-seek?” He scans his environment, lifting his sunglasses when he sees a familiar figure and dropping them back on his nose when it turns out to be a false alarm. “Tell Shield to stop looking for me.”

He cuts the call and breathes out a sigh of frustration.

For the past three months, he has travelled from sandy shores and rugged cliffs on one continent to concrete jungles on another – all for the red-haired girl who’d gone missing at fifteen. He’s tried burying his obsession under the job. He's tried addictions to sex and drinking. For a couple of years, he’d given himself over to alcoholism, but it only caused him to wake from drunken stupors, sweating and heart racing, plagued with memories and horrific outcomes that his mind would conjure. The terror would drive him back to the bottle, where it’d put him into a numbed state until unconsciousness came, and the whole cycle would repeat itself.

Barton, tired of watching his friend throw his life down the drain, called in reinforcements: Bruce, the father he hadn’t seen in years.

Half-inebriated and burning with rage, he'd screamed and taunted his adoptive parent, now with streaks of grey in his hair. It hadn’t been a matter of concern that the Hulk, the gruesome result of the scientist’s last experiment with a super soldier serum and exposure to gamma rays, might emerge, enraged; death would have been a welcome relief.

He’d ranted and railed until there had been nothing left to say. Slumping to the ground, he stared through blurred vision at his lap. When he finally looked up, the man was no longer there. He cleaned up his act and was good until another wave of nightmares, more intense than the last, hit. Instead of succumbing to the lure of alcohol, he ran for safety.

He ran to find her.

He shuts his eyes and breathes in the heated air, trying to focus in the cacophony of sounds that sweeps over him: the noisy chatter of patrons, the clatter of rollercoasters, the screams of thrill-seekers, the obnoxious pop from the café’s outdoor speakers, and the big band music drifting over from Hollywood Boulevard.

When he opens his eyes, red flashes in his peripheral vision.

He shoots out of his chair. It topples over with a metallic clang behind him. With his heart slamming against his ribcage, he whirls the redheaded female around to face him.

His heart drops like lead to the pit of his stomach.

“Sorry,” he mumbles, releasing his grasp on the astounded woman’s forearm. “I thought, uh," he stumbles. "I thought you were someone else.”

Disappointment is a bitter pill to swallow.

He spends the rest of the day wandering aimlessly, walking the lengths of streets and riding buses from one unfamiliar place to another. Dusk arrives. He stares up at the canvas of heavy, foggy clouds under the shadows of towering cranes, blinking at falling raindrops. The city lights up against the darkness of the sky. He thinks she would like the view. When midnight approaches, he finds himself on an arched bridge, gazing down over the edge, and wonders what it’d be like to plunge into the black waters.

His stomach reminds him that he hasn’t had anything but coffee since breakfast. He takes a seat in a restaurant, catches sight of the stash of alcohol behind the counter, and walks out before the thirst becomes insatiable.

Morning shows up with gold streaks at the horizon. He finds her right outside one of the temples in the narrow streets of Little India, dressed in casual wear with red hair pinned back and tumbling about her shoulders.

Jarvis once showed him a picture of how she would look like at twenty-seven; it isn’t just the accuracy that convinces him it’s her.

She turns towards him. At the sight of an illuminated red dot of a sniper’s rifle trained on her, exhilaration turns to dread. His stomach lurches. With adrenaline rushing through his veins, he tackles her to the ground, cursing the lack of a suit, and hears a whizzing sound over their heads followed by the soft thud of the bullet ploughing into dirt.

 _Fouled_ , he jeers.

Grabbing the hand of a stunned Natasha, he pulls her to her feet and begins to weave through the street. That would be the next thing on his to-do list: leave a suit in every country in case of potential assassination. Turning the corner, he shoves her behind a black Mercedes Benz just as a bullet slices through the fabric of his shirtsleeve, brushing his flesh. Swearing, he stumbles in under the cover of the vehicle and drops to the ground beside her.

“ _God_ , that hurts.” He sucks in his breath, blinking away spots in his vision.

At least it hadn’t been an actual hit.

“You know,” he says breathlessly, resting his head against the door. “This isn’t how I imagined our reunion would be like, but better a bullet-ridden reunion than none at all. Barton probably has a good soundtrack for this. You remember him from the academy, don’t you? Irritating kid with spiky hair and impeccable aim.” He chuckles, then winces as pain shoots up his arm. 

She stares at him as though he’d just flown in from Mars.

He suppresses the urge to explain his tendency to ramble, especially during high-pressure situations. “You okay, Nat?” he asks instead. 

“You’re glowing,” she says.

He follows her gaze to his chest, where a soft light seeps through the fabric of his tee.

Ten years couldn't possibly have erased her memories of his arc reactor, could it? Maybe she’d hit her head harder on the ground than he’d thought.

“Me, Tony Stark?” He gestures to himself. “You, Natasha Romanov.”

“Who?” she blurts out, perplexed.

Before he can respond, a splattering of bullets punctures metal, making them flinch. A body comes tumbling over the hood and slides in expertly next to them, landing with a breathless exclamation at the impact.

He lets out a sigh at the familiar head of blond hair. “Please don’t tell me you followed me on my “Around the World in 80 Days” quest.”

Steve Rogers, sans uniform, shrugs. “Super soldiers need vacations too.”

“Why the hell are you here?”

“I had a moral obligation. Bruce told me to keep an eye on you,” he says before catching sight of Natasha. “Oh,” he remarks in a mildly surprised tone. “It’s you.”

“Oh, it’s you?” Tony narrows his eyes. “What do you mean ‘oh, it’s you’?”

“I saw her yesterday. I didn’t know she was the Natasha Romanov, or else I would’ve told you.”

“I’m _not_ Natasha Romanov,” the redhead states in a baffled tone. “I—”

“Hold that thought,” Tony interrupts. Identity issues are prioritized below matters of life and death. “I don’t suppose you came all the way here to tell us we’re all gonna die, Cap?”

“Plane’s ready to go, and we’ll have agents surrounding the area in a few seconds. You know Shield’s got a secret base here, right? Somebody knew you were here.”

He grinds his teeth. No need to worry. He'll do a better job at hiding his tracks next time.

“All right, Ms. Not-Romanov,” he announces. “The good news is we’re getting out of here. The bad news is sandman’s taking roll call, and your name’s on it.”

He sweeps his hand next to her neck in one smooth motion, and she goes limp almost immediately, slumping against him.

He presses his fingers against her neck to check her pulse. “Instant sedation,” he says in answer to Steve’s questioning look. “I used the smaller amount so no risk of it being fatal there. Wasn’t even sure that was enough to knock her out. Got lucky, huh?” When Steve raises an eyebrow, he shrugs a shoulder. “Can’t lug my suit halfway across the world. Doesn’t mean I can’t carry a few of its weapons.”


	2. Chapter 2

Natalie must have fallen down the never-ending tunnel in _Alice in Wonderland_ ’s world and landed on a technologically advanced version of Earth right out of _Artificial Intelligence_. Running from a hail of bullets and then getting trapped in a tower hadn't exactly been the adventure she had in mind when she left her job. The only way it would be any more like a Hollywood film is if the A.I. bot with the British accent tries to kill her.

Jarvis, it’d said. Created by Mr. Stark, the man who has her mistaken for someone else.

What was the name he mentioned?

_Natasha Romanov._

The A.I. informs her in a pleasant tone that she’s on the eighty-ninth floor of the Stark Tower in New York City – 200 Park Avenue at East 45th Street – he specifies. When she questions the reason for being here, the A.I. replies with, “I’m afraid I can’t answer that, Miss Romanov.”

It’s the third time she’s been addressed as Miss Romanov.

“Rushman,” she corrects the system.

She walks from cream-coloured woolly rug to marbled floor, past the abstract painting in acrylic with varied shades of green and the white scoop loveseat with black leather. The last thing she remembers is cowering behind the car with the two men conversing as though facing gunfire is an everyday event. Her memory is fuzzy after that. Someone – Tony Stark, she guesses – must have plucked her from her little sightseeing trip only to dump her back in the States.

She stops in front of an elevator and stares at the shut doors. Maybe she’d be able to magically conjure a call button if she focuses hard enough.

It doesn’t work. Jarvis intervenes.

The elevator descends noiselessly down an unknown number of stories. When the doors slide open, the panoramic view of New York’s skyline stares back at her.

Rows of small, circular lights on the ceiling flicker to life, dousing the area in soft white. She steps out onto wood-panelled floor. Acoustic panels mounted on sloped areas of the walls dampens the echoes of her footsteps, and floor-length mirrors line the wall on her right, stretching from one end to the other. She runs a hand gently over the topmost rail of a fixed double beech barre, soaking in the heavy stillness distinctive of an unused studio. Sweeping her gaze across the spacious room, she spots a glowing pair of blue-white orbs.

The bright round eyes, unblinking, gaze at her, then _it_ moves, approaching with the self-assuredness of a cat, silver metallic tail swaying lazily. It stretches, lengthening its body, a shiny black with white spreading from its forehead, covering its muzzle down to its chest, and colouring its paws. The same soft blue-white light of its eyes emits from beneath the plates of its chest, the cylindrical orbs of its joints, and the tiny oval-shaped spaces of its legs. It’s about the size of a fully-grown domestic shorthaired cat – maybe a little larger – and it presses against her calves, the resounding purr vibrating through its body.

She stoops down, rubbing its cool, sleek head between the ears. On a normal day, she would think twice about interacting with a robotic cat exhibiting traits of a live animal, but it hasn’t been a normal day. “Hey, kitty,” she says in a soft, coaxing voice. “What’s your name?”

“Liho 2.0,” Jarvis answers in place of the metallic feline. “The original Liho was Miss Romanov's pet. Mr. Stark created the replacement. It responds exclusively to Miss Romanov.”

Natasha Romanov, she learns, was Tony Stark’s childhood friend who went missing at age fifteen.

“This studio,” she says. “He built it for her too?”

“Yes, Miss Rushman. Mr. Stark designed it himself, complete with a sprung wood floor and shatterproof lightweight mirrors.”

She wanders towards the glass window. What sort of man would create an artificial intelligence version of a childhood friend’s pet years after her disappearance and build a ballet studio not for use but in memory of her? A man struggling with delusions, or simply a man harboring a desperate hope?

A man who thinks she might be Natasha Romanov. A man who _believes_ she is Natasha Romanov.

But she remembers being fifteen. She'd been fifteen when her parents died.

 _I'm not Natasha,_ she tells herself.

Jarvis takes her next to a level with three doors: the first leads to a boxing ring, the second to a small archery range, and the last opens to a gym, where she finds two people engaged in a spar. She recognizes the bigger-built man as the one who’d crashed into the shooting yesterday. The other fighter is unfamiliar. They notice her during a lull in the match.

The shorter man yanks off his purple headgear. Perspiration drips down his face. “Natasha,” he says, silver-blue eyes glinting.

“Natalie,” the other corrects.

The two of them exchange a look. Uncomfortable, she wraps her arms around her waist, rubbing the sleeve of her loose shirt between her thumbs and fingers. She wants to ask what she’s doing here, but the words refuse to come. Cold metal brushes her skin as Liho 2.0 circles her ankles, back arched.

“Guess we’ll just have to settle for calling you Nat.” The stranger strides off the mats to the side table, grabbing a Nike bottle off the surface. “I’m Clint, by the way. Clint Barton, in case memory fails you. And that’s Steve.” He sprays water into his mouth and wipes sweat off with a pale blue towel. “What do you think, Nat? Up for some sparring?”

She blinks at the unexpected invitation. Most people meeting for the first time don’t challenge each other to spars.

She straightens self-consciously. “I've never sparred.”

“That’s all right,” he interrupts. “Steve will teach you. Won’t you, Steve?”

“Sure, why not?” The blonde pulls off his headgear and rubs a hand against his mussed hair. “Probably not sparring, but I can teach you some moves if you’re interested.”

She finds herself standing on the red and blue puzzle mats. Liho 2.0 follows her right up to the edge, where it sits waiting, glowing eyes fixed on her. Clint sifts through a pile of equipment on the floor and tosses red-and-black foamy paddles one by one in perfect arcs to Steve, who catches them against his chest.

“Don’t worry.” Steve gives her a reassuring smile. “We'll start with the easy stuff, and if you’re not comfortable with any of it, we’ll stop.”

The mystery of beginner’s luck, Natalie thinks, as she surprises herself by hitting one target after another. Or maybe it’s the balance and flexibility gained from years of ballet. At the end of the session, Clint, dangling from the ropes, calls out a "Brava" and tells her she fights like a dancer. Steve congratulates her on a job well done.

“Thanks,” she says, sweeping back flyaway strands of red from her face.

“Want to hear a funny story?” Clint says as they enter the elevator. “I came in here the other day, and Steve was going at the punching bag with Duke Ellington in the background. Can you believe it? Who works out to big band?"

“Don't knock it till you've tried it,” Steve warns. “Big band is in a league of its own.”

She doesn’t know how to respond to them: Clint, who treats her as though he’s known her for years, or Steve, who tries to overcompensate and give her as much space as possible. They had been strangers only hours before.

 _I’m not Natasha,_ she says to herself. _I’m not Natasha. I’m not Natasha. I’m not Natasha._

Throughout dinner, she repeats it like a mantra, over and over, until the name starts to throb in her mind like a pounding headache. Even as they tell her that her memory’s been tampered with. She wants to tell them it’s a mistake, but the words lodge stubbornly in her throat.

She asks about Tony instead, the man of the tower, who has yet to be seen.

“He’s probably locked up in his lab and won’t be out till morning. And that’s on a good day.” Clint looks at her with piercing eyes. “Why? You want to talk to him?”

She twirls a noodle strand that she wouldn’t be eating around her fork. “Yeah,” she says. “I’d like to talk to him.”

After dinner, she returns to the ballet studio. Maybe it’s the comfort of the familiar in the midst of the unknown. She pads through the quietness of the room. If she closes her eyes, she can almost smell the mingling scents of rosin and canvas, feel the sting of perspiration, and taste the salty tang of sweat. At the window, she marvels at the breath-taking sight of New York City’s lights at her feet.

When she turns back around, she notices a sliding door, perpendicular to the mirrored wall. It shields a small compartment like a storeroom. 

She cranes her neck, searching for a switch and finds none.

“Jarvis,” she says. “Will you turn on the lights?”

Florescent bulbs illuminate the tiny space. A kid-sized BMX bike lies abandoned in the corner, paint chipped off the aluminium frame. It leans against a rack with shelves littered with a myriad of objects from children’s books to intricate kites to glass figurines. She passes by a pair of faded red ballet shoes, chuckles at the sign of a dog’s teeth at work near the tip, and stops at a stack of cards wedged between _Grimm’s Fairy Tales_ and a snow globe with a ballerina at its centre.

The card she pulls out has characters drawn on its cover. A stick man of green holds hands with smaller figures – one, bearing a blue circle on the chest, in yellow, and one, sporting longer hair, in red. Three nearly unrecognizable shapes surround them; pets, she guesses, from the circles roughly resembling faces, triangles at the top, and four upright rectangles at the bottom of each form.

With a faint smile on her face, she flips open the card. Large uneven lettering reads, “Happy Father’s Day” with smaller words underneath. It takes her a moment to realize the letters aren’t in the English alphabet. She gives the foreign words a closer look before shrugging and slotting it back on the shelf.

Pity she doesn’t understand Russian.

 _Not like Natasha,_ she thinks. _I'm not Natasha._  

It’s late when Jarvis escorts her back to her room.

“Keep the lights on, please,” she murmurs sleepily, curled up on the bed as the gentle breeze of the AC caresses her skin, the softness of the pillow cradling her head. A flash of autumn leaves, the humming of Brahms’s lullaby, the scent of familiar cologne. She teeters on the edge of slumber, thoughts jumbling together.

_– To be missing at fifteen is a shame. –_

_– What did they call her? –_

_– Natasha. –_

_– No, not Natasha. Natalie. –_

_– Missing. At fifteen. –_

_– Her parents died. –_

_– She’d been fifteen. –_

_– Or had she been five? –_

The darkness pulls at her consciousness, tempting and irresistible. She shuts her eyes and gives in to the void that envelopes her.

* * *

Tony wonders what it’s like to fly. From the edge of the landing pad right outside the penthouse suite, he stares down at the city. He knows what it’s like to be the face of Iron Man, to fly in the suit. Without it, could he?

They say there’s a difference between being dumb and being stupid. Dumb refers to someone with diminished intellectual capacity, attempting something because he or she doesn’t know the consequences would be damaging. A stupid person, on the other hand, knows better but does the thing anyway.

He’s not dumb. Hardly. He knows what the end result would be. It’d be messy, and if he’s lucky, painless. But it’d be an idea to test out, wouldn’t it? The thrill would be incomparable.

He rocks a little, feeling his palms dampen, the chill of the night wind against his face.

Then he blinks, the lights of New York City flashing behind his eyelids. He draws in a deep breath. The cool night air clears some of the alcoholic haze, and he scoots back until his legs are no longer dangling in the air. He reclines slowly until his back is flat on the ground and stares up at the dark sky. He imagines he can see faint glimmers of stars. Post-rock music drifts from the penthouse to the outdoors.

 _Explosions in the Sky_ , he thinks, trying to guess the band through the fog in his head. Or maybe _The Moon is a Cold Light_.

He once had a list containing ten things he wanted to accomplish in life. By the time he reached twenty, he'd marked off half of them; they seem less significant now. After that milestone, he created J.A.R.V.I.S., his very own artificial intelligence system. Number 3 on his list. Forbes ranked him as one of the richest in tech. Number 7, maybe 8. He found a family.

He also lost a family. That hadn’t been on the list.

He squeezes his eyes shut and runs cold hands over his face. Rolling on the hard ground, he pushes himself up and stumbles to the penthouse, swaying slightly off-balance.

He found Natasha. He thought he was on his way to putting the family back together again, the one that fell apart when she went missing. Three minus one equals to none. He didn’t think that she would have a whole new life, one without any trace of him or Bruce.

_Natalie Rushman._

He lets out a short, sardonic laugh. She should have chosen something with less resemblance to her old life.

Fuck.

He collapses on the couch. His chest starts to hurt, his shoulders haunch.

_Breathe._

Maybe he should call Bruce. Maybe the old man will be able to trigger the memories that Jarvis says may be irretrievable. Or maybe he should do it himself, Tony Stark. Go right up to her and say, _hey Nat, remember when we were at the academy, and it was us against the world?_ Or say, _remember when we were in Paris with Bruce and wandered off? That was the first time Bruce got angry with us. You were so scared; you wouldn’t speak for an hour._

_Breathe, Tony._

Or _How about that year I skipped classes at university and drew graffiti on the walls and got into a fight where I wasn’t the victim for once? If Bruce got mad during France, you must remember how furious he'd been. You stood up for me, remember? Even though I did break the other guy’s nose for no reason other than the fact that he’d been staring at me. I was tired of getting stared at. You remember how that feels too, don’t you, Nat?_

_Breathe, Tony Stark. Breathe._

He presses against the couch and draws in a shuddering breath.

Better.

He exhales. His body relaxes against the cushions.

Yes, much better.

“Jarvis, do you…can you—” He pauses. His words are slurring together.

The A.I. prompts him gently. “Sir?”

His tongue is thick in his mouth. “Is she, uh…she sleeping okay?”

“No abnormality in her vital signs, sir,” Jarvis replies. “She appears to be sleeping well.”

“‘kay,” he breathes out.

Maybe Natalie Rushman is a blessing if she allows Natasha a life without nightmares.

His eyelids grow heavy. Only for a moment, he thinks, as he lets them fall shut. When he opens his eyes, the sun is glinting off the edge of the table, and two Shield agents stand over him with a request to enlist the help of one amnesiac Natasha Romanov.


	3. Chapter 3

Baccarat crystal chandeliers and gold-plated wall sconces light up the hotel's ballroom. Guests mingle at the balconies and around the twenty-six tables decked with elegant floral arrangements. Instrumental jazz drifts from the speakers, layered with the soft chatter from the attendees and of champagne glasses clinking. Reporters, fortunate enough to gain a pass to the event, subtly jostle each other, waving mics before his face. Everywhere he hears them calling his name, trying to get his attention.

“Mr. Stark!” A reporter calls out. “What are your thoughts on the debate regarding delegating moral and ethical decision-making to machines?”

“Mr. Stark, knowing the issues you have with keeping your propulsion technology secret from the government, what do you have to say on the recent dispute between Apple and FBI?”

“Mr. Stark, what do you think of the nuclear reactor troubles in Fukushima?”

“Any comments on fracking and water pollution issues, Mr. Stark?”

“Mr. Stark, we’d love to hear what you’re currently working on. Any upcoming projects?”

No one mentions the redheaded woman on his arm, or the matching rings they wear, which he is sure haven’t been noticed yet, but he is aware of heads turning for second glances. Not that he blames them. Natasha is breathtaking. The Atelier Versace dress that Agent Hill picked out is an excellent choice, stunning in emerald green and complimenting her figure.

Now if only she would smile instead of looking as if she’d rather be anywhere but here.

He runs his fingers across the bare skin of her back to relax her, regretting it almost immediately, and wraps an arm around her waist instead, lifting his other arm for attention.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he projects his voice over the crowd. “Ladies and gentlemen, I’ll get to those questions in a minute – and no, I haven’t been working on anything of late, though I _have_ been busy – right now, I have a very special announcement to make.” He lowers his voice with the flair of an actor and draws a tense Natasha close. “Ladies and gentlemen, it’s my pleasure to present to you,” he pauses. “Mrs. Tony Stark.”

He anticipates the second of silent astonishment before the room erupts into chaos.

“I never thought I’d settle down either,” he tells one bespectacled man with a crooked tie. “But you know, when it’s the right one, it’s the right one. I just knew she was the one for me.”

To another, he remarks, “Nobody really knew. The wedding was kinda hush-hush. A little unplanned, if you know what I mean.” He gives the blond woman a conspiratorial wink. “We were planning to fly to the Maldives, but we just couldn’t miss this event. I guess it counts as our first honeymoon.”

“Bruce?” He repeats when someone asks him if his adoptive father knows. “Yeah, he knows. He was the first one to know when we got together.”

If Bruce knew what he was doing, the man would probably hurl him through the wall, and that’s not counting what the Hulk might do. Probably thrash him then hurl him through another few walls.

When the interviewers have extracted sufficient information to leave him alone for the moment, he leans towards Natasha and brushes his lips against her temple like an attentive, love-struck husband. “You need to relax,” he whispers. “It’s a celebration, not a funeral procession.”

Uncertainty lurks in her dark-lashed eyes. He feels a pang of regret for snapping at her earlier that day. His brusque manner hadn’t been intentional. He’d been on edge ever since Coulson told him that they required Natasha’s help at the twentieth anniversary of the World Federation of Technology Organizations. It hadn’t been more than two days since she’d gotten shot at, and Shield mysteriously gets a request to put her in the field in exchange for a handful of agents held hostage. He'd argued that Natasha being Natalie means she’s got no skills or experience to speak of and would be akin to putting a civilian in harm's way. But they were insistent. Using a holographic mask on an agent would be too risky, they said, especially since there had been a specific order for Shield agents to stay uninvolved.

It baffles him why she even agreed to do it in the first place. He doesn’t know which decision bothers him the most: them requesting her to go undercover when she’s clearly not functioning right or her reluctant agreement to go along with it.

He wasn't about to let her go alone, so he volunteered to accompany her. As himself, of course. He isn’t a Shield agent – hasn’t been for years since Natasha’s disappearance – and who better than him with his reputation in the technology industry?

Questions churning through his head and worry through his gut kept him awake the entire night. How could he sleep? He’d gotten her back only to place her right in the lion’s den. In the morning, he emerged from his room, grouchy and irritable. When she so innocuously asked if he wanted breakfast, he responded by growling at her.

That had been their first and only conversation in the Stark Tower.

Before leaving for the search and rescue mission, Clint had glared at him and told him to stop being a douchebag. Steve tossed him a look bordering on contempt as he stuck his shield on his back.

“She’s scared to death, Stark. She doesn’t know what she’s getting into. The last thing she needs is for you to yell at her.”

As though he’s dumb. Stupid, maybe, but not oblivious either. He’s never forgotten the look of her face shadowed with fear.

With the reporters dispersed and seeking other targets, he tugs her closer, his hand grasping hers, trying to eliminate distance and resistance, until she yields and relaxes against his side. He feels the tension ease from her body as he nuzzles the crown of her head, catching a hint of vanilla and jasmine – familiar as a female scent, but foreign to him as the Natasha he’d grown up with.

“Sorry,” he murmurs close to her ear. “For this morning.”

She answers with a wan smile, and he sighs internally. Once, this may have been Natasha’s comfort zone, but it’s quite obviously not Natalie’s. He nudges her towards one of the side doors, taking advantage of the commotion going on at the entrance of another VVIP guest arriving.

“We can go?” She asks quizzically.

It’s the first thing she’s said to him since the morning.

“The instruction was for you to be present at the event and the conference this week. You showed your face today,” he says. “Besides, we’re newly-weds. We’ve got places to be, things to do. Best to go now with everyone’s attention on Gauthier.”

“Who?” she asks, twisting her head for a look at the white-haired gentleman who’s garnering as much attention as Tony had earlier.

“Francis Gauthier,” he says, whisking her out the door. “Rumor has it that he has the kind of technology to rival mine. He also claims he knows the extent of North Korea’s weapon technology. Personally, I’d take his words with a grain of salt. I don’t trust anything he says. He’s a slippery eel.”

“No lost love between you two.”

“Understatement of the century.”

He quickens his steps on the carpeted hallway, nods at an ambassador passing by, and steps into the empty elevator. He jabs the button for the nineteenth level, and as the doors close, lets out his breath noisily and yanks the skinny black tie loose. “Thought we’d never get out of there.”

He notices her staring at him curiously. “What?”

She shrugs. “They told me you’ve done this a lot. I guess I got the idea that you like these events and the, uh,” she pauses. “Attention.”

His gaze flickers to her with a slight degree of coolness before resting on the display of increasing floor numbers above the doors. “Yeah, well,” he says stiffly. “Different circumstances.”

Their suite had been sponsored for them, not that he needed the financial help. The first thing he does is to scan their accommodations for bugs before heading into the study to find the stash of weapons exactly where Coulson told him it’d be beforehand. He possesses some level of firearms and martial arts experience, but he’s far from being a combat expert. That’s more Natasha’s field of expertise, at least before her memory loss. He’s better at tinkering with gadgets and the like.

He exits the study and proceeds to set up the devices that would alert him if anyone enters or leaves the suite. Once that is done, he finds her in the master bedroom, where their belongings have been placed on the luggage bench.

“You can take this one,” he says from the doorway after watching her wander in her silver heels and tousled red curls. “There’s a second bedroom just down the hall. I’m going to take a shower. And you, get into comfy clothes. Or soak in a bath. Whatever it is the ladies like to do. If you get hungry later, we’ll find something to eat, or just order in.” He grabs his bag off the bench and turns to leave.

“Mr. Stark?”

He pauses.

She offers a faint smile. “Thanks.”

In his bedroom, he shrugs his coat off, tossing it on the dark purple velvet couch, his white dress shirt on the bed, and leaves the rest of the clothes on the floor. He steps into the shower and stands under warm running water, letting the spray hit the top of his head first, then the wound-up muscles of his back. He stares at the white gold ring encircling his fourth finger and turns his face up towards the showerhead, thinking of nothing, deliberately. He counts from one upwards until his lungs ache and the urge for air becomes overwhelming. He finally jerks away with a gasp, choking on the water trickling into his mouth. He swallows, presses his forehead against the granite slab wall, and lets out a breathless laugh.

He’s out of the bathroom before she is. It’s just past seven. In a pair of sweatpants and tee, he shuffles towards the kitchen to the refrigerator, where he finds a couple of soda bottles, beer, and water. He considers his options, the cool air drifting over his skin, and reaches for the Coke.

Best to avoid the alcohol, but he figures sugar would be harmless.

When she emerges from the bedroom half an hour later, he’s on the couch in the living room, flipping through the Room Service menu.

“Feeling better?” he asks, glancing at her, then does a double take. Her scoop neck tee is a light pink with the words “Princess Ballerina” in white. He clears his throat and looks down at the menu. It’s not something he imagined fifteen-year-old Natasha would wear.

Then again, she’s not fifteen anymore.

“Better,” she says.

He feels her gaze on him as she settles on the other side of the couch. He nudges the menu over to her. As she browses through the pages, he turns on the eighty-inch television, surfing through channels, and pretends to be absorbed in one of the shows airing. A World Wrestling Entertainment program, he realizes after a few seconds of staring at the screen.

“How’s your arm?”

His eyes flicker towards hers in confusion before he realizes that she’s referring to the wound he’d gotten from the bullet the other day. He’d almost forgotten it exists, what with the events happening after the night of alcohol indulgence on the Stark Tower’s landing pad.

“It’s just a scratch. No big deal.” He brushes off the concern. “Listen, you ready to order? Because I’m starving. I hear the filet mignon is pretty good. The lamb too, unless you’re a vegetarian, which I don’t think you are, since you just bypassed the salad section.”

He rambles, and she looks at him with a heart-achingly familiar expression. 

“If you’re trying to hide a smile,” he says. “You’re not doing a very good job of it.”

She shrugs, unbothered. “I take back what I said. You don’t always like the attention. You’re selective.”

He fights the urge to cross his arms. “Barton gave you the low-down on Stark issues, is that it?”

“No,” she says. “Just being observant.”

He fidgets, discomfited by the conversation. Without replying, he rounds the couch, picks up the phone by a modern art sculpture, and waves the handset at her. “Food,” he says.

When their dinner arrives, he’s still on the wrestling channel, and she has her nose stuck in a book: _Crime and Punishment_ by Fyodor Dostoevsky. A bit of heavy reading on a mission, he thinks after getting over his surprise that she packed a book with her.

“They say reading while eating gives you indigestion.”

“Watching this much violence on screen might give _you_ indigestion.”

“It’s fake.”

“So is the saying that reading while eating leads to indigestion.”

_Touché._

They stack the dishes back on the trays after the meal. She looks pointedly at the roasted carrots on his plate and mentions something about food wastage. He ignores her. Eight is too early to retire for the night. He tinkles about on the piano, botches a couple of classical pieces, improvising when his memory fails him, and smirks when Natasha threatens to chuck her book at him for wrecking Mussorgsky’s _Pictures at an Exhibition_.

He grows tired experimenting on the piano and drops onto the nearest cushioned chair, letting his legs dangle over the arm. “So,” he begins. “You think that murder should be permitted in the face of the greater good?”

Her head snaps up. “You’ve read the book?”

“You’re surprised. Should I be insulted?”

“No,” she says, regaining her composure. “And yes. No. I don’t know. I don’t handle the scales of justice. You tell me when the killing is justified.”

“Pedophiles, rapists, terrorists.” He lists them on his fingers. “Murderers who kill innocents.”

“Oh, you mean, like, the government in war? I mean, they use words like casualties and collateral damage, but…”

He points a finger in her direction. “That’s not what I meant. Truth. You would let people like human traffickers who kidnap children go free? Or would you let a terrorist live and let a hundred others die instead?”

“No,” she says after a pause. “But it still feels a little like playing God.”

Later that night, before she goes to bed, she asks him what Natasha Romanov was like.

Independent, he thinks, visualizing six-year-old Natasha all the way till fifteen. Brave, intelligent, persistent, bull-headed, quick to defend him but silent in the face of taunts. She loved watching leaves fall in autumn - leaves of fire and blood, she once told him - and also the sting of winter’s cold against her cheeks. Sometimes she would hum the most obscure classical pieces under her breath while pretending she was a world-famous ballerina. The first time she tried vodka, she left a mess on the floor. She made him promise not to tell anybody, especially not Bruce, and right after she’d puked her guts out, she proceeded to go for another round.

Natasha, who loved physical thrills and hated being seen as vulnerable. Natasha, who would sometimes wake screaming in the night.

A survivor. A bearer of scars.

Then he looks at her, lingering by the door of the bedroom, in her track pants and pink shirt with her hair in a messy bun. Natasha, who doesn’t remember anything of her past. Natasha, who believes she had a relatively normal childhood free from trauma. Natasha, who knows nothing about being a spy but agreed to risk her life for the greater good.

“She was like you,” he says.

That same night, he is awakened by a phone call from Coulson, who tells him that Francis Gauthier had been murdered just a couple of hours ago.

“I’d like to say it’s probably not related to the hostage situation, but I don’t believe in coincidences,” the Shield agent says. “Barton and Rogers are still out searching for the right location. This guy’s got them going round and round in circles. I’m not sure what kind of psychotic game is being played, but you better be careful.”

Just minutes after hanging up, he walks into the master bedroom to find an empty bed, curtains fluttering by the open window, which sends a chill down his spine because his alarm should’ve gone off, and Natasha huddled in a corner of the bathroom with knees drawn to her chest, cradling hands splattered with blood.


	4. Chapter 4

The sun is dipping low in the sky when Tony finally turns into the driveway of the two-storey hideaway cabin tucked in a corner of the mountain. Barton is the only other person who knows of its existence. The archer has made several attempts to call him over the past few hours, all of which he has rejected. He has heard all that he needs to know; Shield believes Natasha killed Francis Gauthier.  
  
No, not just killed. Murdered.  
  
“They have her on tape,” Barton said in a message left in his voicemail. “I don’t know what the fuck is going on, but I know you, Stark, and I know you sure as hell didn’t get yourself captured. They’re letting the big guy know about Nat right now. You better get your ass back here ASAP before it all goes to hell.”  
  
Tony and Natasha gone rouge. He chuckles to himself mirthlessly. What a time the press would have if they knew. If the situation weren’t so dire, he would’ve laughed at the absurdity.  
  
He helps her into the house and onto the couch, running his hands down the arms of the hoodie he’d placed over her top. Her fingers are icy to his touch. A quick search reveals what he’s looking for folded on the top shelf of a simple oak wardrobe.  
  
“Gotta thank Barton for this,” he says, wrapping the blanket snugly around her shoulders. “Last time I was here, there wasn’t much of anything besides the mattress.”  
  
She gazes at him like a child lost in turmoil. On occasion, he’d catch her mumbling partial sentences like “didn’t mean to” and “wasn’t supposed to happen”. She hasn’t said a word to him ever since he found her crouched in the corner of the bathroom, quivering like a hurt creature, eyes cloudy with fear and confusion.  
  
He cups her face gently, brushing his thumbs against her skin. “We’ll be okay,” he says, giving her a small, affectionate smile.  
  
He heats the soup he’d bought from a drive-through in the microwave and coaxes her to eat. When that fails, he fills the silence with chatter, cracking stupid jokes that used to make her laugh and making inane comments about the weather.  
  
“Hey, guess what a baby computer calls its father? You remember this joke, don’t you? Wanna give it a shot? No? Data. The baby computer calls its dad data. Yeah, it’s kinda lame, but whatever. Look, it’s pretty out. It’s getting colder too. Cold’s really not for me. I’m more of a summer kind of guy. Sun, sand, and sea. Beaches, babes, bikinis. But you like autumn. You said it had the feeling of nostalgia.”  
  
She curls into his side that night, one hand wrapped around the fabric of his shirt. He runs his fingers through hair red as the leaves on the mountain and hums the lullaby Bruce used to sing to her. Hours after getting to bed, he falls into an exhausted sleep, only to wake to her thrashing in agitation. He pins her down when words fail, his heart hammering against his ribs. Open eyes collide with his in terror. She jerks fiercely, trying to break free. Tightening his arms, he pulls her closer, his cheek against her forehead, their legs tangling, holding her until the tremors subside. She buries her face in his shoulder. The dampness seeps through his shirt onto his skin.  
  
“I murdered someone,” she says when morning comes around.  
  
Her words hang in the air like dark clouds before the ferocity of the storm.  
  
“You hungry?” he asks, staring at the tiny hazel flecks amidst green in her eyes.  
  
He loans her one of his jackets. Fishing a cap from the drawer, he sets it snug on her head. MIT, the cap says on the front, one of his from when he’d been attending the university. He thought he’d lost it.  
  
“Engineering?” she asks, fingering the bill of the cap.  
  
“Electrical engineering and physics,” he replies. “Undergrad, masters, my first doctorate in computer science and artificial intelligence.”  
  
She fixes a curious gaze on him. “You started young.”  
  
He shrugs. “Fourteen.”  
  
They drive through isolated, winding roads to the nearest town. Early morning rays set the treetops ablaze with a golden hue. At a roadside café, they order meals that lie untouched on their plates. Cutlery clinks around them, layered with the soft murmur of voices from the other patrons, and punctuated with the occasional bicycle bell. By the swinging door, a mother sits with a little girl and a slumbering baby strapped to her back right across the businessman on his cellphone. Outside the window, an elderly couple shares a quiet moment over breakfast on an outdoors bench. Were these people carrying on with their everyday lives happier with less complexity? Beauty in simplicity, Natasha once told him, and only destruction in wanting more.  
  
What if he never asked for more, but received it anyway?  
  
“Are you afraid?”  
  
Her voice breaks the silence between them. He blinks, startled. “Afraid of?”  
  
She meets his gaze. “Me.”  
  
“No.” His voice does not falter. “Are you?”  
  
She looks away. “I don’t remember how it happened.” Her voice is low. Faint. “I remember I was in the room, and then…not. And there was blood. Everywhere. I don’t see his face. I can’t see anything. I can’t—” Her breath hitches as she struggles for composure.  
  
He lowers his eyes to the plate of runny omelette with greasy sausages, jaw clenched.  
  
“I used to remember things, but now they’re just missing. They’re just…not there.”  
  
They make a quick stop near a local grocery store before heading back to the cabin. Late that afternoon, they hike up the side of the mountain on the path less travelled, shaded by the crowns of trees full of leaves yet to fall, with twigs and pebbles crunching beneath their feet. The autumn air is cool, brushing against heated skin, and rustles through the topmost branches. They break from a clump of trees to the rock outcrop at one of the mountain’s peaks. The sun sets a fiery glow at the horizon, the trees brilliant with shades of green, red, and orange. They seat themselves on the flat rock, still warm from the afternoon heat.  
  
“Tell me everything,” she says.  
  
He obliges and starts from how on his fifth birthday, he’d made a wish for a friend at the academy. She wraps her arms around her legs, resting her head on her knees as she listens. Her face is still wan, but at least she’s lost that pinched, hurt look.  
  
“And then, there was you,” he tells her. “And there was me. You would help me with Russian. I’d helped you with the basics of programming. Did I mention it was a special school? They had specific instructions for each kid on what to study, what to eat, when to sleep, the whole shebang. They controlled everything. Or almost everything. I thought it was strict. Now, you, on the other hand, you thought it was acceptable.”  
  
He was the one who never had a second thought about whether or not he was breaking the rules and had to face the consequence of disciplinary action. She was always the cautious one, disapproving of his rebellious streak, yet whenever he needed her help, she never hesitated. He found trouble, but because of him, trouble found her.  
  
“The other kids shunned us like we were lepers. The mute and metal, that’s what they called us. The younger ones would laugh at us, and the older ones, some of them got physical. More me than you. You were a weapon. They never dared to take you on unless they were in a group.”  
  
“I fought?”  
  
“You were born a fighter.”  
  
He leans back onto the warm flat rock, stretching out, hands behind his head. “The academy had people who’d come to visit. You wouldn’t know their names or what they did for a living. Sponsors. That’s all we’d know. People who’d pick and choose the kids they were interested in, kids who showed potential, kids that they could use. Sometimes the students they invested in disappeared. We never knew what happened to them.”  
  
Sent for missions, sold to others, lying in a ditch somewhere, maybe dead.  
  
“They wanted you. They wanted to buy you like some merchandise on the market for sale." He blinks up at the sky. "And you didn’t cry. Not in front of them. I mean, not in front of me too,” he fumbles. “But I knew—I mean, I saw—” His words jerk to a stop. He takes a deep breath of the mountain air before releasing it quietly. “We left.”  
  
“As in run away?”

“Guess you can say it’s not the first time we’re on the run.”   
  
“And then?”  
  
“Then we met Bruce.”  
  
Bruce always had a special gentleness in the way he treated Natasha. Even as a child, he noticed the difference in leniency. There had been no jealousy or rivalry. He understood why. He knew he hadn’t been the only one hurting when Natasha was taken, but as a fourteen-year-old, he hadn’t wanted to empathize. He wanted to lash out. Bruce had been the one to bear the brunt of his anger.  
  
“He was always worried about you. Still is.” He picks up a stone lying by him and rolls it between his finger and thumb. The rounded edges press against his skin, turning the pads white. “Once you didn’t return home at night. That was, uh, when you asked me to hang out, but I’d been working on some stupid gadget in the lab. I convinced him not to enlist the help of the entire police force and Shield to go looking for you. You came back at five in the morning and said you’d been observing a stakeout. First time you were ever grounded.”  
  
He would’ve been upset. She hadn’t been. A few weeks after that, she started to address Bruce as Papa. Tentatively, at first. Soft, and shy, almost inaudible, as though it was something to be ashamed of. He’d thought Natasha would be most opposed to viewing Bruce as a father figure with her reluctance to accepting a new presence in their lives.  
  
He’d been wrong.  
  
“At fifteen, you heard that Shield needed a girl to play Alexei Kuzmichev’s daughter. You volunteered for the job as the real Natalia went into hiding. You said it was fate, that both of you shared a similar first name.” He hurls the stone into the distance. It soars, bounces a couple of feet, and rolls over the edge. “You disappeared during Alexei’s fifty-eighth birthday celebration. A hundred fucking people present. Nobody saw what happened.”  
  
Everyone thought the kidnapping had been related to the real Natalia Kuzmichev, but what if it hadn’t been the rich girl the captors were after, but Natasha instead? What if it was those from the academy or the ones who’d killed her parents, returning to get her back?  
  
“It all sounds so fantastical.”  
  
He lets out his breath. “Yeah, I guess it does.”  
  
They trek back to the cabin under darkened skies. He navigates his way around the kitchen and makes them dinner as she sits at the counter, playing with the ring in her hand. Water bubbles in a silver pot on the stove. He stirs in salt and dumps handfuls of fusilli into the boiling water.  
  
Rubbing her thumb over her lip, she tilts her head. “Weirdest moment.”  
  
“When you first got your period,” he admits. “Let’s just say I might have been an ignorant boy at ten. You’d never gotten sick before. You with your perfect immune system.” He chuckles. “I probably annoyed you the most that week.”  
  
“Funniest moment?”  
  
“Funniest moment.” He wrinkles his brow. “I made you your birthday dinner when you turned thirteen. You ended up with food poisoning.” He looks at her over the counter and lets a smile tug at the corners of his lips. She laughs, which makes him laugh, and the tightness in his chest loosens.  
  
“Pain and suffering, inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart,” she says as they lie on the bed that night. “One of my favourite quotes from _Crime and Punishment_.” She turns her head to look at him. “And if he has a conscience, he will suffer for his mistake.”

He gazes up at the blades of the ceiling fan rotating in slow circles, distracted by the thought of a game they used to play, a game that originated from when he would address a situation or answer questions with a single line or a short excerpt from books and philosophers. She learned fast and started shooting back with quotes she’d memorized whenever she grew annoyed with his incessant babble. It evolved over a period of time and became known as the quoting game; last one to end with the appropriate quote wins.  
  
He doesn’t recall who won their last game.  
  
“It’s been a while since I read Dostoevsky,” he says.   
  
“You should read it again.”  
  
“I’ll remember to pack the book next time we go on the run.”  
  
“You're a smartass, you know that?”

He does.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Late update. Distracted by Civil War. Come talk to me.

The air is heavy. Almost suffocating. How long has it been since she’s seen daylight or felt the warmth of the sun on her skin? She presses her back against the stone wall, jerking away when the chill spreads to her skin. Her dress is damp, rayon fabric sticking to her thighs. She shuts her eyes, chewing on the inside of her lip. She will not cry. Crying is for the weak.

The prickling at the back of her neck warns her of approaching danger. He is at least six feet and measures three of her in width. He throws her a piece of hardened stale bread and lingers by the open cell door, watching her eat with an intensity that makes her stomach turn. She sniffs and turns her head away, letting long, uncombed hair hide her face.

He spits out derogatory terms in Russian. The moment he turns to leave, a daring thought and a sudden surge of adrenaline take over. She jumps him from the back, clumsier than usual, and straddles him when they fall to the ground. Blinded by desperation and rage, she grabs onto his neck and tightens her hold, applying pressure on his throat. He struggles, thrusting out his hand. It makes contact. An intense pain shoots up from her abdomen, a strange, electrical pressure. She blinks at the shock of pain, taken aback, and loosens her grip. When she looks back down, it is no longer the twisted face of a dangerous threat, but the whitened face of Tony Stark.

She stumbles back from the bed, horrified. A once-broken connection crackles to life: faint, fuzzy images of mirrored rooms, crumbling marble cherubs, and a tousled-hair boy on a swing set.

He reaches out to her, one hand still wielding the device that had prevented her from killing him. She shies away, shudders sweeping through her body, and takes off into the darkness.

She doesn't know how long she runs, where she's running to, when she stops. She wakes up in the dank basement of an abandoned house. The sound of rain pelting the ground is a distant noise. She pushes herself up from the dirty concrete floor. Her fingers are numb, her mouth dry.

Broken memories swirl like a deep, murky pool of uncertainty. She remembers blood, the thread of red that runs through her memories. The life of Gauthier spilling over her hands, draining from him.

Why had she done it?

Unrecognizable sounds spill from her lips. Her hands twitch. When she cannot still the tremors, she clenches them into fists and shoves them under her thighs where she won’t see them shaking.

_“Ya khochu, chtoby moya mama, moy papa.”_

It is the voice of a little girl pleading for her parents, followed by a slap that echoes dizzily in her head. Someone screams, a rage-filled cry emerging from the depths. Desperate. A shiver runs down her spine. She is cold, and the endless screaming will not stop.

“I’m Natalie,” she mumbles, pressing her fists against the floor. She draws in shallow breaths. “I’m not Natasha,” she says.

But the words are not more than slight motion of lips and faint hissing of consonants.

* * *

_“The Americans have made you soft.”_

_She jerks her head up, eyes boring into the heavyset man who had spoken in Russian. He snorts in derision of her defiance and strikes her hard across the face with the back of his hand. She hits the ground, head spinning._

_“A few days without the comfort you’ve grown accustomed to,” he says, emotionless. “You’ll learn.”_

_They shut her in a solitary cell. There is just enough space for her to walk four steps from one end to the other. No windows. Steel door hard and unyielding. Cold walls. The darkness is her companion._

_She huddles in a corner and squeezes her eyes shut, succumbing to a warmer place inside her head. She thinks of Bruce. She thinks of Tony. They keep her from tipping over the edge. She imagines her father rocking her in bed, singing her a lullaby, his voice low and soothing. She pretends to be running through the woods with Tony, diving into piles of autumn leaves and laughing at one of his ridiculous math jokes._

_Over and over. If only the memories would never wear out._

_The colours go first: the brilliance of Bruce’s and Tony’s first joint project, putting up Christmas lights on the house, the rich redness of ballet shoes, the brown shine of eyes that she finds refuge in. The feel of touch go next: the summer sun on her face, her father’s fingers in her hair as he attempts a braid, the first scratchy stubble Tony keeps. The sounds, she fights in vain to cling to: the melodic notes of Swan Lake, the low rumble of Bruce’s amused laughter, Tony’s constant ramblings._

_Then there is nothing but an endless stretch of darkness._

* * *

Black Widow. That’s what they called her.

It was supposed to be a simple mission. Kill Gauthier, leave a trace, and render Stark vulnerable. It should have been an easy feat to gain his trust. They had full confidence in their plan, in her abilities, in Stark’s emotions for her. What they didn’t count on was Natasha Romanoff forming an attachment to the target.

She'd been trained to kill, deceive, and manipulate: skills that made her their most valuable asset, and only an assassin with a death wish would form attachments to anything. Survival should be her sole concern. It used to be.

Why should what Tony Stark say change all that? 

* * *

_She thought they'd died. But perhaps her memory is faulty, because there they are right in front of her._

_Her mama. Her papa._

_They want her to kill them._

_She can't. And she won't._

_The aftermath leaves her unable to get out of bed for the next three days. When the other trainees return late that night, she hears one of them snigger and remark with condescension, "Stupid girl. Doesn't she know they're only life model decoys."_

* * *

 Memories can be planted. Emotions can be deceiving.

She's seen enough to know trust placed in the wrong hands can turn out in a bad way. 

* * *

_He couldn’t have been more than two years old, unaware that his parents lie in a pool of blood right outside the playroom. His brown eyes stare at her with childlike curiosity as he tugs at his blue jumper, thumb in his mouth._

_Her seventeen-year-old self tries to shake off the nagging feeling of once knowing a similar gaze._

_Sentimentalism is a weakness that will only get her killed. She’s seen it happen to the others._

_She aims the gun at the target and decides that to kill is better than being killed._

* * *

Blood of the young and the old. Red in her ledger. A demand that blood is paid for blood.

Failure has its consequences. An assassin with a conscience cannot return to her old lifestyle. She would no longer be able to follow orders without questioning them, thanks to her stint as Natalie Rushman.

Going to Shield might have been an option if she hadn’t killed Francis Gauthier. It doesn’t matter that she’d been programmed to commit the murder. It doesn’t matter that she has no real recollection of killing him, only fleeting bits and pieces in her head, like the memories Tony told her about.

All that matters is that she did it, and every act has a consequence.

* * *

  _Her heart is pounding faster than usual, either from the excitement or nervousness. Maybe both. Emerald eyes gaze back at her from the mirror. She wonders if the glimpse of uncertainty would be apparent to anyone else._

_At the soft sounds of footfalls outside her room, she turns and finds an unexpected guest at the doorway; Tony leans against the doorframe, grinning. “All dressed up and ready to party,” he says. “What’s a man gotta do for a girl to take him out on a date?”_

_She laughs, thankful for the distraction. “You’re not even fifteen.”_

_“That changes in a few months,” he says, arms crossed over his chest. “Do you know some cultures say you reach adulthood by thirteen? If you ask me, a person’s age shouldn’t determine whether some guy becomes a man or not. It’s a superficial measurement created by society, which functions well for the common folk.” He tilts his chin in arrogance. “Not for the rest.”_

_He’s different, she thinks, listening to him in amusement. Taller, with a hint of shadow on the lower part of his face, which looks good on him, but it’s more than just his physical appearance._

_He cocks a brow at her scrutiny. “What?”_

_“Nothing,” she replies. “I missed you. I thought you’d still be on campus.”_

_He shifts his glance away. He’s worried about her leaving for her first undercover mission; that much is clear. It’s why he’s here instead of being on campus. It’s also why he hasn’t spoken to Bruce in weeks. He thinks Bruce should’ve said no when she asked to join Shield’s operation._

_But it’s her choice, and he recognizes that too._

_“Do me a favour?” She picks up two pairs of earrings from the dresser as he ambles into the room and presents them to him. “Consulting your expertise,” she says in a teasing voice._

_He gives the two options a cursory glance and points to the set in her left hand._

_She breaks into a smile. It’s what she would’ve chosen._

_“It’s pretty,” he says, almost absently._

_“And matches Natalia’s taste.” She places a thumb at the back of her earlobe, sinking the hook through the tiny opening. “Did you know she told me I could keep the outfits? Dresses, shoes, earrings, the whole lot. Memorabilia from my first mission in the field.”_

_“They should’ve worked out some kind of cover for me,” he grouses, plopping down on her bed. “Be your cousin or something. Not that I’m made of the same kind of spy material as you are, but I’m an incredibly gifted faker. Plus I can fight now.” He looks at her with a deadpan expression. “You remember when I busted that guy’s nose, don’t you? I can throw a mean punch.”_

_She shoots him a mock stern look. “Not funny, Tony.”_

_As if she could forget the day she found out he started a fight. She’d holed up in her room that weekend, listening as Bruce and Tony yelled at each other at the top of their voices. It’s not a memory she’s particularly fond of._

_“I’ll be all right, you know,” she says. “I won’t be able to contact you for a while until they say it’s okay to, but I’ll be fine. I can take care of myself.”_

_He doesn’t reply, doesn’t even look at her. She bites the inside of her bottom lip, staring at the edges of her manicured nails pressing against her palm before saying in a small voice, “Are you mad at me?”_

_He lets out his breath in a sigh. “No, Nat, I’m not mad at you. I was mad at the choice you made. Does that count?”_

_He looks over at her with a smile. She imagines it is less bright and vibrant than the ones he usually gives her, but still, a smile, and she responds in kind, relieved. She would have hated leaving him without knowing if he was upset with her._

_He kisses her when it’s time for her to go. “Don't forget me,” he tells her in a joking manner, but she sees the tinge of solemnness in his eyes._

_She slips her hand into his, warm and familiar. “I won’t.”_

* * *

She knows they’re there. She’d been expecting them for a couple of days now.

When the first one comes at her, she slams him against the brick wall. Not hard enough to kill, just to incapacitate. He goes limp. She uses the second agent as leverage to kick another in the face before wrapping her legs around his neck. As she throws him to the ground, a searing pain pierces her left shoulder like hell’s hottest flames licking at her flesh. Her breath hisses out through gritted teeth. It’s not the first time a bullet has torn through her body, and certainly not the last either.

The second shot hits her side. It burns, and it takes her down. She doesn’t know when it starts getting cold. Numb. There are voices speaking over her, words that make no sense. She blinks at the greying sky, surprisingly calm at the thought of approaching death. It would be fitting, with all the blood on her hands, stains that would never wash off, a reminder of the innocence she has taken.

No. Death is more than what she deserves.


End file.
